Cascade Lakes Relay - pre-race thoughts

Courtesy Jeff McKayMcKay near the finish of the Royal Victoria Marathon.

As I sit here behind my computer a little over a week away from running in my first relay, trying to gather my thoughts as to what to say I realize that first of all this isn’t something that I just decided to do at the spur of the moment, but it has been a few years in the making.

When I was younger I ran all the time; but once I had kids and had a job to deal with the running kind of stopped. A little over 4 years ago, after life settled down a bit I decided to get back in to running. Boy was I in for a surprise; those what used-to-be-easy 2 mile runs hurt and were really slow. How did my 43-year-old body get so far out of shape? Yikes a eye opener for sure; and even though my knees really hurt and I felt like a truck ran me over I kept at it every day, working toward my goal of running the Butte to Butte 10k. A couple months in and I’m still struggling with 4 mile runs; how am I going to make those last 2 miles?

Well I made it to the Butte to Butte and then set my sights on a half marathon 2 months later. Somewhere between those events running became easy. What I’m trying to say is that I was not fighting for air and my legs didn’t hurt anymore. I ran the half marathon in a time far better than I thought and before the weekend was over I signed up for the Portland Marathon less than a month later. I had no idea what to expect or train. I finished the Portland Marathon, content to let my marathoning end there … that is until Eugene announced they would have a marathon at the end of April 2007; I couldn’t miss my home town marathon could I?

Now I’m a veteran of 14 marathons since October 2006, having ran in Boston this year along with 2 other marathons so far.

I first heard about these “relay” races in 2008, when people were mentioning the Hood to Coast. It sounded like fun but I was too late to get on a team, and in 2009 things did not work out for me again. I found it hard to get on a team that already had run together in the past.

Kelly JohnsonJeff's ready for the elevation, the mileage, and especially looking forward to the teamwork.

This year I have got my chance to finally run in a relay, the Cascade Lakes Relay on team Lactic @sses. Our team has 4 people from Portland, a couple from Eugene and some from Creswell. I have ran with most of these people and there are a couple that I probably won't meet until the race.

I’m really looking forward to running in a team style event that is challenging and also fun. I’m also looking forward to building stronger friendships with those I already know on the team and starting ones with those I do not know. I’m also looking forward to sharing my special “recovery” cookies with my teammates. My special recipe calls for oatmeal, dark chocolate chips, bananas, peanut butter, diced almonds, protein powder and other ingredients … I haven’t heard anyone say anything bad about them, in fact I’ve had people tell me I should sell them.

My portions of the race are legs 4,16 and 28 which is about 20 miles in distance. I believe that I’m ready for the distance; but my biggest concern about this event is the elevation. Now that I look back at all my marathons none of them have been at a high elevation, almost all of them are low land, coastal elevation; in fact Eugene or Portland
may very well be the highest elevation I ran in.

Besides the elevation concern I’m wondering how my legs will operate on my 2nd and 3rd legs when I’ve been sitting around waiting for my turn again? What about sleep depravation? I’m not a kid anymore and I have found that it isn’t as easy to stay up for long hours now. I wake up before 4a everyday for work, but normally I call it a night around 8:30p.

Two of my legs (4 and 16) are not on pavement, and this will be new to me also. Even though leg 16 is not paved it is going to be in the middle of the night, and I love running in the early morning hours before the sun comes up… in fact one of the things I did last Christmas morning was to wake up at 2:30am get my running clothes on and went out for a 26.2 mile run before the sun even thought about coming up. It was an awesome run in the foggy, still and quiet morning air. There is something special when it is just you and the road in the early morning hours.

I’m excited about this new challenge, maybe this will be the start of several more relays just like my first marathon led to many more. Isn’t running great!?